ANN ARBOR — The Center for Geospatial Medicine at the University of Michigan is working to reduce death and disability from Type 2 diabetes under a grant announced today as part the nation’s 2010 health care law.

The center is part of a multistate research team examining Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, in at-risk populations in four underserved counties in North Carolina, Mississippi and West Virginia. The Center for Geospatial Medicine, which uses systematic, spatially based methods for analyzing environmental threats to people and communities, is housed within the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative at the UM School of Natural Resources and Environment.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the preliminary recipients of the Health Care Innovation Award today. The UM project received $9.8 million and is led by the Duke University Medical Center.

In all, more than 3,000 proposals were submitted. Twenty-six were chosen in the first round to receive $122.6 million in funding. Those projects are expected to reduce health spending by $254 million in the next three years.

A second series of preliminary recipients will be announced in June.

The research team also includes the Durham County Health Department (Durham, N.C.), Cabarrus Health Alliance (Cabarrus County, N.C.), Mississippi Public Health Institute (Quitman County, N.C.), Marshall University and Mingo County Health Department (Mingo County, W.V.). Their research effort is titled, “From Clinic to Community: Achieving Health Equity in the Southern United States.”

“Geospatial mapping and analysis will combine medical information and community information so that interventions can meet both individual patient and larger community needs,” said Marie Lynn Miranda, dean of the UM School of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the Center for Geospatial Medicine, which includes an office in Durham.

“This will allow researchers to visualize complex relationships among the locations of diabetes patients, patterns of health care and available social resources,” Miranda said. “The information will serve as the basis for intervention design, decision support and real-time monitoring of interventions.”

Over a three-year period, the collaborative program will train an estimated 88 health care workers and create an estimated 31 new jobs. These workers include new types of health workers, such as information officers, health integrators and community health workers, who will use novel technologies to facilitate communication, education and care delivery.

“Diabetes is a devastating problem, but is especially far-reaching in the southeastern region of the United States,” said Dr. Robert Califf, vice chancellor for clinical research at Duke and leader of this project. “Previous approaches have not been able to stem the tide. Changing the course of the diabetes epidemic requires a radically new approach. By combining the modern technology of electronic records and geospatial mapping with a new workforce of community-based health care professionals, we believe we can achieve the triple aim of better outcomes, better health care and lower cost.”

The innovative program will employ local home care teams that will provide patient-centered coordinated care to improve outcomes and lower cost — reducing hospital and emergency room admissions and reducing through preventive care the need for amputations, dialysis and cardiac procedures with estimated savings of over $20 million.

“We can’t wait to support innovative projects that will save money and make our health care system stronger,” Sebelius said in a statement. “It’s yet another way we are supporting local communities now in their efforts to provide better care and lower cost.”

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at HHS administers the awards through cooperative agreements. Awardees were chosen for their innovative solutions to health care challenges facing their communities and for their focus on creating a well-trained health care workforce equipped to meet the need for new jobs in the 21st century health system. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the health care and social assistance sector will gain the most jobs between now and 2020.

The mission of the Center for Geospatial Medicine is to develop systematic, spatially based methods for analyzing the pathways through which the environment, genetic and psychosocial domains jointly shape health and well-being. For more information, visit http://cehi.snre.umich.edu/projects/cgm.